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Discovery: Science Stories: Series 3 - Mesmerism and Parapsychology

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Mesmerism and Parapsychology

02/01/2017 GMT

Science Stories: Series 3 - Mesmerism and Parapsychology

BBC World Service - Discovery, Science Stories: Series 3 - Mesmerism and ParapsychologySearch BBC

The showmanship of Anton Mesmer and the rise and fall of animal magnetism

The showmanship of Anton Mesmer and the rise and fall of animal magnetism.

Anton Mesmer was a doctor who claimed he could cure people with an unknown force of animal magnetism. He was the subject to a committee that found there was no evidence for his powers. Phil Ball tallks to Simon Shaffer, Professor of History of Science at Cambridge University, about the rise of showmanship in science at the time of Mesmer in the later 18th Century, and to Professor Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University about contemporary parapsychology.

Image: 1784: Franz Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734 -1815) Austrian doctor known for inducing a trance-like state, called mesmerism, Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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